INTRODUCTION The Study of women language of Elizabeth`s speech in the king`s speech movie.
3 hedges or fillers, question tags, rising intonation,
“empty” adjectives, precise color terms, intensifiers,
“hypercorrect‟ grammar, “superpolite‟ forms, and emphatic stress.
Lexical hedges are the parts of hedging devices that can be used to weaken the strength of an assertion Lakoff, 2004, p. 48. There are
“hedges‟, such as, you know, well, kind of, you see, are used to weaken the force of an utterance.
However, sometimes lexical hedges indicate uncertainty, but not always. Similarly to express uncertainty, people can use question tags. The examples are
“The movie is good, isn‟t it?” or “Your mother can‟t go, can she?”. Women may use rising intonation to clarify the main point of the statements or questions.
Rising intonation is used by women by turning a statement into a question Lakoff, 1973 2004. To express approval or admiration as the features of
feminine, women can use “empty” adjectives, such as divine, adorable, charming, and cute. Women make more precise discrimination in color terms Lakoff, 1973
2004. It means that they tend to differentiate all the color names in detail. For instance, there are many colors for women
‟s make up. There are beige, baby blue, Persian melon, and orange flips.
Intensifiers indicating on the increase or decrease of the intensifying with which is expressed. For instance a He is highly recommended, b I was only
asking. Women are not supposed to talk rough Lakoff, 2004, p. 29. They tend to use “hypocorrect‟ to imply that grammatically they are correct. Women tend to
use “supperpolite forms”, select the appropriate words to show politeness in their speech. Women tend to
use “emphatic” stress to emphasize the most important
4 word in their statement Lakoff, 1973 2004. For instance,
“What a beautiful flower
” or “It was absolutely good”. As stated by Lakoff 1973 2004 all of the examples above indicate the features of women‟s language.
Based on the background, it is interesting to study the use of women ‟s
language because it happens in daily life. Women‟s language can be one of
discussion topics in Sociolinguistics class, and Lakoff‟stheory is discussed in the
Sociolinguistics class of Sanata Dharma English Language Education Study Program. Sociolinguistics is a study of the relationship between language and
society Holmes, 1992, p. 1. It explains why people speak differently in different social context, and identifies the social functions of language.
Another reason why it is interesting to study women‟s language is because
the researcher thinks that women‟s language is important to English speakers who want to improve their public speaking skill, especially to the students in the
English departments. Since the students of the English Department of Sanata Dharma are accustomed to do a presentation in their class and practicing teaching
at school PPL, they should be able to be good public speakers. Being a good public speaker means that students should be able to deliver the messages to the
audiences. By studying the use of women‟s language, students will mind the language before speaki
ng to audiences and also think what features of women‟s language that cannot be done. For example, students have to avoid using more
hedge or fillers like “emmm” “shhh”. They must consider the social background of the addressee and context of topic discussion before using it in front of people.
5 Then, the researcher chose
The King’s Speech movie because the movie is dedicated to King George IV, a king in the United Kingdom. The researcher chose
this movie because it was a box office movie. The film received many awards and nominations. Then, the researcher analyzed Elizabeth, one of the female
characters in The King’s Speech movie.
In order to study the womens language used by Elizabeth, one of the female characters in
The King’s Speech movie, the following research problem is formulated:
Do Elizabeth‟s speeches reflect the features of women‟s language as suggested by Lakoff‟s theory 1973 2004?
The researcher hopes that this study will be beneficial for some parties. First, it can help the students of the English Language Education Study Program
that they have to be brave in speaking English without feel doubt, so that women‟s language are used in communicating each other. Second, for the
lecturers and teachers, the researcher hopes that it can be used in delivering information in the classroom. Teachers and lecturers can communicate well in
class while delivering information because every student has their own characteristic in speaking. Third, for future research hopefully this research will
help in finding information about women‟s language based on Lakoff‟s theory 1973 2004. The last, for the readers, the researcher hopes that the readers will
know the features of women‟s language.
6 B.
Research Method In this study, it is applied qualitative research. Qualitative research is an
approach to study human and social behavior phenomena from the insider ‟s
perspective, for instance, participants in a particular social setting; a culture, school, community, group, or institution Ary, Jacobs, Razavieh, 2002, p. 422.
The goal is to understand a phenomenon by focusing on the total picture deeply, rather than a numeric analysis of data. To answer a research problem, the method
that was used is discourse analysis . Discourse analysis is a person‟s point of view
that contains of methodological and conceptual elements Wood Kroger, 2000, p. 3. They also state that discourse data includes spoken word and written text.
The researcher conducted a discourse analysis to study the phenomenon about the use of women
‟s language in a movie. It was because this study investigated the existence of women
‟s language that was used by the character in the The King’s Speech movie.
The data in this study was obtained from transcripts of the film. The transcription was conducted on 14-17 Mei 2014 in Jl. Legi 32a, Caturtunggal,
Depok, Sleman, Yogyakarta. The participant of this study was Elizabeth, one of female character in the
movie. This research was conducted in order to investigate the features of women‟s language of Elizabeth in the movie.
Since the researcher applied a discourse analysis, the one who gathered data is the researcher. In this study, the researcher obtained the data in a form of
7 transcript. The researcher found the data from the conversation of Elizabeth with
others in the movie that had been transferred into the transcripts. There were six steps used to obtain the data or documents of women
‟s language. First, the researcher chose or selected the movie. Second, the researcher
looked for references about women‟s language. Third, the researcher looked for
the transcripts then watched the movie. Fourth, the researcher found out the features of women
‟s language. Fifth, data were collected. Sixth, after data were collected, the researcher classified the data into nine features of women
‟s language based on
Lakoff‟s theory 1973 2004.
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